


Quote-Inspired Fics + Ficlets - #5

by DovahDoes



Series: Quote-Inspired Fics (& Ficlets) [5]
Category: Far Cry 3
Genre: Blood, Brief cameos or mentions of Sam and Vaas, Gen, Hoyt-centric, Humor, I mean every bit of the illegal/illicit goings-on is mentioned, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pre-Canon, Rook can be hella creepy yo, Spooky, also, at a few points-- but it's fairly mild, disturbing imagery, if that's a fair warning?, maybe? at some point??, or so i think, the phrases 'poor Hoyt' and 'silly Hoyt' are equally relevant throughout this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9436970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DovahDoes/pseuds/DovahDoes
Summary: Fifth in the series of Quote Challenge responses.*Precisely whydoesHoyt Volker stay (primarily) on Rook South?ORHoyt nopes the fuck out of an entire island for Good Reason.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I post a LOT of quotes on my FC3 tumblr, and I thought that it would be A Good Exercise and also maybe A Learning Experience for me to use them as inspiration for some fics and ficlets. 
> 
> Hence, this little series! Hopefully something is to your liking.
> 
> P.S. Check out the works of AlmesivaMoonshadow, if you haven't already. I took a bit of inspiration for bits of Hoyt's background, here, from some of her headcanons on her lovely Tumblr. <3 So yeah. Click dat link and read dem fics.

 

_**"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Henri Bergson** _

 

 ___________

 

Hoyt Volker sits straight up in his chair, irises pale and nearly luminescent in the unnatural glow the backlit laptop screen casts in the darkened room.  Grimacing, he exhales through his nose, quasi-opaque curls of smoke momentarily obscuring his view of the slideshow of images playing just to the side of another window whose contents have yet to load.  The middle-aged kingpin easily tugs the end of a fairly thick charge cable from the side of the small notebook computer before picking it up, ready to head to bed and begin winding down for bed.  He then leaves the stubby remnants of a one hour-old cigar to self-extinguish in a conveniently placed ashtray at the desk’s edge, before standing up and making his way through a nearby doorway and into the adjoining room.

 

More than used to the location, Hoyt pays no particular mind to the muted opulence of his bedchambers, distractedly draping his plush smoking robe over a golden (or rather, _gold_ ) bedpost, and seats both himself and the quietly whirring laptop atop the satin-soft sheet set.  Absently, he moves an extra pillow atop another at his back, so as to stay comfortable while finishing up his work for the night.

 

When the screen is once more tilted to the optimal angle, the de facto ruler of Rook sees that the window taking up a small portion of the monitor is ready to use, its black background already filling with highly contrasting white text.  He spends the next few minutes receiving updates from and issuing fresh orders (or threats, where needed) to several subordinates and partners located off-island.  One of the last contacts he speaks with is Doug, far and away the most successful and effective of his ‘head hunters’ on the nearby mainland. 

 

The younger man provides yet more detail on the sizeable group of Americans that are due to arrive on Rook North just after noon, tomorrow.  The lone heir to the Volker diamond fortune quickly ends the conversation and then enlarges the images that are playing slowly on the left half of the display, all the better to scrutinize their subjects.

 

“Hn…” he grunts, pensively, still perusing available information on this crew of spoiled, American brats due to ‘drop in’ on one of his islands in just over 12 hours.  Any one of these grinning imbeciles is worth an almost literal fortune— more than some of the net profit he has seen from one of the slow months in the business of ‘moving people’.  (The lot of them?  Ah, well, it is shaping up to be a most excellent summer, indeed.)

 

The only problem, he muses, as he shuts the lid of the laptop and sets it aside, is found in himself.  Micro-managing has been the downfall of many a successful leader, and Hoyt is hyper-aware of the fact, but with such a significant opportunity about to present itself, the desire to engage in a more ‘hands-on’ style of operating is nearly impossible to resist.  (The adage ‘if you want something done well, you must do it yourself’ seems especially apt to him in this moment.)  He really _should_ head over to Rook North in time to confirm that these all-too-important ‘commodities’ are acquired without a single hitch.

 

Vaas is a decent enough ‘general’ of sorts, but his ‘officers’—the privateers under his command— barely approach tolerable.

 

The thought of returning to the island on which he originally resided upon coming to this blasted, tropical cess-pit of deadly wildlife and aggravatingly uncooperative natives fills him with a dread he has not felt so viscerally in several years.  Five years, to be precise— five years have gone by since he left Rook North, refusing to ever return, so long as he operated under his own power.

 

He frowns, blinking unseeing eyes in the inky darkness, and grimaces, wishing for a _cohiba_ or two to calm his tumultuous thoughts.  Is returning to the other island an actual possibility he is considering, now?  Instead of thinking on the idea any further, he flings an arm across his tired, achy eyes and forcibly tries to find sleep, heaving a mighty exhalation.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

**_Five Years Earlier_ **

 

 

Reconstruction of the above-ground parts of his hilltop home has been completed for quite a while, and Hoyt has more than made himself comfortable, there.  The second floor is his living quarters (rather like a smallish flat), and the downstairs features a sizeable kitchen, a family room, and several other rooms whose purposes shift from one thing to the other on a weekly basis.

 

It is also where his full-time bodyguards stay overnight, typically working in shifts and getting rest on a stray settee or two.   Yet more well-trained mercenaries patrol the house’s perimeter and surveil the nearby land.  (This house might be structurally similar to the ramshackle one that that ‘Dr. Earnhardt’ character occupies, but it is infinitely more impressive and valuable, thanks to numerous repairs and upgrades he has overseen.)

 

In any case, the hour is late when the diminutive drug lord makes his way upstairs and begins to strip down for a quick shower— he had intended to look over some ledgers, but the layer of dust, dirt, and even more mysterious detritus has effectively put a stop to that plan.  (Today’s focus had been on overseeing the first day of reconstruction [mainly destruction] at the ruins of some sort of Native structure/shrine far out in some deep jungle.)  Within 15 minutes, he is gratefully settled into bed, enjoying the overhead fan pushing refreshing currents of air downwards and lulling him into a comfortable slumber.

 

* * *

 

 

              **Cool.  Here it is cool and calm and _right_.  The dense air around him moves, slightly, but it does not move _him_ — physical forces do not often affect his being.**

 

**His awareness is kept limited— at the moment, his hunger is sated and so basking in this placid place holds far more appeal than does any sort of hunting or finding or fighting.**

 

**Light filters down— a stray beam tries to pierce the darkness he prefers to shroud his form within— and he allows his gaze to drift upward, as lazy as the flotsam and jetsam that infrequently dots his surroundings.  The beam of light disappears and another takes its place only slightly differing in position— the numerous silhouetted lotus flowers and lily pads floating serenely above him manipulate the dappling rays of sunlight with serene ease.**

 

**There is a change in the stillness— a vibration, the soundwaves traveling to the pond’s bed in split seconds.  Something in him awakes, alight with an untamable thrill as he surges up and up and up— rising to chase after whatever (or whoever) has disturbed his rest.**

 

**He breaks the surface of the— the _water_ (he recalls, now, that water and air are different and even have their own names among the tiny, short-lived creatures that he sees from time to time).  The _need_ to find and take and rend and _feast_ is all he knows.**

 

**This is _his_ place— _his_. He has kept it that way since time immemorial, and always will.**

**He reaches forward with one scarlet hand, its several spindly digits tipped in deadly claws wrapping whip-quick around a small figure dallying on the bank.  The taste of terror is a flavor he never tires of sampling.**

 

* * *

 

 

The strange dream is easy to put out of his mind: his morning is shaping up to be filled with all sorts of ‘fun’ work with several of his newer accounts.  (He makes a note to hire someone else onto his accounting/’numbers’ team— tedium does not even _begin_ to describe some of this drudgery.)

 

It is as he is reaching blindly to his right for a hefty graphing calculator kept at the desk’s edge, that he realizes something is amiss.  Or rather, something is _missing_ : the calculator itself.  A cursory glance about the office reveals no sign of the device, but the second he makes a move to push back the wheeled computer chair, he realizes precisely where it is.

 

The volume of the cracking sound that its strong, plastic shell makes is worrying, but after moving the chair a second time and picking the sizeable implement up, the damage is, surprisingly, quite minimal.  He grunts in tired irritation and places the calculator back in its usual place, beside the growing pile of paperwork, with quite a bit of force and then sets out for a brief walk to the kitchen for a much-needed break.

 

He waves off the chef’s nervous verbal diarrhea as he heads back upstairs to finish the last half of his work.  The plate of sweet fruit slices had been precisely the right little repast to put him back into the ‘account-checking mood’.  Sitting down, back upstairs, he immediately notices a problem—the calculator is, again, no longer where it had been left.  Feeling a distinct sense of aggravating déjà vu, he carefully rolls his chair to one side and finds his suspicions are confirmed when he spots the calculator in the same spot it had occupied, earlier, on the floor.

 

“Hnh.  Must have knocked it back down when I sat down, again,” he mutters to himself, intent on making some headway on these papers, finally.  He gets down to work and doesn’t move from that spot for another three hours.

 

The chair bearing his weight creaks and groans a bit as he leans into the cushioned material behind him to stretch out his back, rolling his head about several times to give his neck muscles a rest, too.  Without bothering to open his decidedly desert-dry eyes, he leans forward to settle the whole of his head’s weight on one palm, the elbow of his lightweight, collared shirt mussing several unlucky printouts.

 

His right hand comes to rest atop the smooth, polished wood at the lower edge of the elegant piece of furniture.  This carries some alarm, because it happens to be the exact spot in which his familiar TI-80 had sat _a mere ten or fifteen seconds, earlier_.

 

This time, he does not even need to look at where he is reaching— instead he just contorts his body, awkwardly, over one of the raised arms of his chair and manages to pluck the wayfaring little object from its new little ‘home-away-from-home’ with just two fingers.

 

“Agh! Bladdy fokking desk!  Must have been made by the goddamned _apprentice_ , leaning to one side like this!” he snipes, voice rising with every few words, eventually slamming his hand (and the much-abused calculator in it) down atop the wooden surface before him and shooting to his feet.  Behind him, there is a sound of plaster doing its best to hold its shape and structure as an office chair strikes the wall and then heavily topples to hit a dark, paisley floor rug, its lush microfibers not doing much to muffle the incredible racket.

 

It is barely three and a half seconds before a clatter of heavy footfalls approaches his location.  When the door bursts open, admitting four fast-moving men in full tactical gear, Hoyt is ready, and whirls on them, eyes afire and accompanied by words flying fast and furious.

 

*

 

Downstairs, the perpetually apprehensive, _very_ new chef clutches the counter before him for dear life, half convinced he is about to be fired for the small plate of hors d’oeuvres he had served his eminently terrifying boss, earlier.  His fears are partially assuaged when he picks up some choice bits of said boss’s diatribe when several sharp reprimands make their way downstairs and carry through the open spaces, there.

 

“…. fokken idiot we got this from….. want my damned money back….. _needs_ to fire whatever near-sighted _loskop_ sent out this lopsided piece of shit furniture!  Now get out and take this bladdy _slapgat_ thing with you!”

 

In his two and a half weeks in Mr. Volker’s employ, the recent culinary school graduate has seen and heard many things— the majority of them morally dubious, at best— but it is still a notably strange spectacle that shuffles its way right by the entryway to his domain.  At the sight of a particularly miffed-looking, heavily armed man whose height dwarfs his own by several heads, the agitated cook promptly turns back to preparing that evening’s supper.

 

The front door slams shut behind the last of several men supporting the not insignificant weight of the custom-made, large office desk that they are carrying away to parts unknown.  The young man determinedly stirs the fragrant wine sauce in the shallow saucepan before him, absently noting the sound of water rushing through pipes, somewhere above his bent head.

 

Mr. Volker skips dinner, that night.  (Maybe he’s gone to bed early?) 

 

*

 

As deeply irritated as he is tired, now, Hoyt pads towards his minimally lit bedroom, grumbling to himself as he passes by the closed door to his office, all while feeling mildly enticed by the savory scents wafting by from downstairs.  (He is not prone to muttering, typically— his father had done a sufficient job of doling out a good _klap_ or two [or three] if ever he caught his lone heir speaking even a single word under his breath.  An ‘unbecoming habit’, he’d called it.  Still, he has had a trying day, and needs must, so nature transcends “nurture”, in this instance.  The muttering commences.)

 

“The damned _house_ is on an incline.  _Why_ did I even have to _choose_ to live on top of a bladdy hill when all my _fokken_ desks and tables are apparently built to _recreate the fokken experience_?” he gripes, pushing aside the half-open door and stepping over to the opulent sight that is his bed.

 

His velveteen smoking jacket is left hanging on the knob of the closet door, and Hoyt is swiftly settled into his sheets, alarm clock set and bedside light clicked off.

 

(In the morning, he will find his calculator on the floor by the door of the closet.  He will assume one of his men had helpfully placed it on the [probably _also_ cockeyed] table beside his bed, only for it to predictably end up tumbling down.

 

He will be wrong.)

 

* * *

 

 

**Feeling air on his head, then shoulders, and finally, the majority of torso is a peculiar experience: now there is a contrast in temperature between the two elements.  (Water, cool.  Air, warm.)  This day, the steps he has heard near his shore are different than any he has heard before.  They are nearly silent and undetectable, and somehow more deliberate than an unsuspecting sort of meandering, as most tend to be.**

 

**It is the work of a moment to spot the trespasser before him, painted as he is in dark and varied inks and stains, similar in coloration to the flora of the forest surrounding them.  This little creature carries a weapon, one born of flexible wood and elastic fiber that can propel long, sharp projectiles at impressive speeds. _Bow_ and _arrow_ , they have been named, he believes.**

 

**Regardless, there have been none of this particular kind who have ever challenged his claim to this territory, so there is no concern about any of these unusual extra props.**

 

**Air fills his chest (swirling down through his very fingertips and flowing up through his mind— he is, after all, not built like the little being before him) and when it is exhaled once more, it is tinted a dark and desaturated hue of smoky violet.  It is corrosive to the flesh of mortal beings as well as profoundly toxic for any of said beings insolent enough to creep onto his lands, and has been used to great effect in millennia past.**

 

**Something is different, somehow, now.  Off.  Discomfort is not something he has borne in quite some time, but there is a prickling sort of heat rising rapidly around him which wreathes his body in that most unpleasant feeling.**

 

**Water is cool, air is warm, and he will soon find that fire is hot.**

 

* * *

 

 

Hoyt has never been exceedingly fond of exercising his rather more than decent penmanship— it is one of very few things that is liable to evoke a series of softer feelings from the deep recesses of his thoroughly blackened heart.

 

(Truly, it is the mélange of some diametrically opposed experiences that upsets his carefully maintained façade, if only internally; his [initially] poor penmanship had been something of An Issue in the early stages of primary school, much to his father’s chagrin.  Also, an embarrassment, clearly— why was he _squandering_ his hard-earned monies putting an incapable, ungrateful runt through such _excellent_ schooling if he wasn’t even able to submit a single, legible assignment to any instructors?

 

In the end, it had been his mother, reticent and more often gone— or inaccessible— than not, who had tutored him on quiet evenings.  Her theretofore unknown skill in calligraphy had been a monumental boon, at the time.

 

He still wonders, even now, how someone of her station had acquired such a genteel skill.  Really, how someone of her station had ended up with his father…. Hoyt shakes himself out of the brief reverie he’s fallen into, scowling at his wandering mind, and returns to the task at hand.

 

There are not many documents that require his signature or initials, but it has been several weeks of controlled chaos marking his moving into this property, so there _is_ a bit of backlog to slog through.  Luckily, efficiency is a place where he excels, and he is nearly halfway finished in only two hours, constant yawning be damned.  (The fresh carafe of coffee, downstairs, is sounding— and smelling— like a better and better option with each passing minute.)

 

Currently, he is writing a beyond rare letter of gratitude— _hand writing_ it, of course.  (Most will assume he has hired someone for the job, anyway.)  The nib of the dip pen flies over the paper in elegant patterns, leaving loops, curls, and flourishes marking beginnings and ends of phrases and the occasional character.  It is after the second sentence in the third paragraph that he notices the change— the ink seems to have shifted in consistency, taking longer than usual to leave its mark on the ivory cardstock beneath it and leaving several very visible blank spots in the pen tip’s wake.

 

It is the work of but several moments for him to detach the small reservoir attached to the underside of the nib and replace it with the extra one kept nearby, thus removing the immediate need to give it a thorough cleaning to remove any buildup of old, dry ink— the typical cause for slow or interrupted flow.  Regarding the most recent line of script in disgust, he scraps the paper, quickly crumpling it before brushing it into an ornate, golden rubbish bin to the side of the desk.

 

Absently, he reaches out to give the silver-inscribed inkwell a brief swirl to make sure the liquid inside has kept its perfect consistency.  His opposite hand stifles a yawn that feels like it means to unhinge his jaw, while his momentarily squinted eyes watch his slightly ink-stained right hand line up a new sheet of paper to work with.  The fresh reservoir is promptly popped into place on the pen’s shank, and the enterprising ‘entrepreneur’ is back to his business in short order, in spite of any interruption.

 

Except, _again,_ something is wrong with the pen (or the ink, or the paper, _or the bladdy fucking desk again_ , for all he knows): his writing looks almost scratchy, and there are entire sections of lettering where the ink has skipped entirely.  Before he even has a chance to get truly frustrated, a peculiar feeling overcomes him— there is a strong pressure building in the room where he sits.  His hearing rapidly becomes muffled, somehow, as it might before it pops from a rapid change in altitude, and he has to close his eyes to combat the sudden sense of severe disorientation.

 

When he blinks his eyes open a few seconds later, the room seems to have righted itself and his ears have recovered from whatever weird mountain sickness must have overcome him, momentarily.  (Hn.  Did anything _actually_ just happen, or are the several successive days of shoddy sleep finally starting to affect him?  The thought is shelved in favor of _getting the fuck over it_ and getting back to his goddamned, _still unfinished_ work.)

 

Hoyt returns his focus to the page in front him, intent on just breezing through these last few documents that need composing and/or signing, in the next half an hour.  Foregoing the dropper (typically used to keep the addition of ink from becoming messy) to his side, he instead dips the nib directly into the inkpot, carefully keeping the expensive ivory and silver pen from becoming too deeply immersed in the dark fluid.

 

At this point, he only intends to be sure that his troubleshooting has worked and so he perfunctorily scribbles several random shapes and loop-de-loops, checking for thickness and consistency in the ink flow.  As is common when one dips directly into a well, a bit of blotting occurs, initially.  What is _not_ so common is the reddish tint suffusing these fast-drying designs.

 

In fact, if Hoyt Volker were a man given to sleep-deprived flights of fancy, he might conclude that said red stains consist entirely of blood.

 

Hoyt Volker is anything _but_ fanciful, though (save when it comes to wishing for better quality vinyl recordings of the Staatskapelle Dresden’s _Wagner Medley)_ , and if there is anything approaching unease or concern welling up within him, he is quick to dismantle and disregard such emotional insurrection.  The sleep-deprivation thing, well, perhaps he could use a good _doss_ a bit later.

 

The second the smell hits his nose, however, denial becomes immensely more difficult, as there are very few things in the world with quite the same bouquet as blood, the scent of which he is intimately familiar with after years spent fighting his way to his position.  Completely done with this baffling well of shitty, overly-oxidized or colour-changing or _whatever_ ink (likely locally-manufactured, too), the scrawny Rook overlord stands up and sweeps the lot of the paperwork over the precipice that is the desk’s edge and into the rapidly filling wastebasket waiting below.  Somehow, his antique silver-inlaid glass inkpot topples over the edge, too, despite it _definitely_ having been a good distance away from any of the several scattered sheets of high quality cardstock.

 

His fingers _just_ manage to touch the side of the little translucent container as it tumbles toward the pricey albino crocodile hide shoes resting nearby.  The sound of shattering glass is universally recognizable (as well as grimace-inducing), and Hoyt is no exception to the reaction.  Now _far_ beyond irate, he bends down to quickly wipe the bloo— the dark, wet stain from the toes of his loafers, and fastidiously hopes they are salvageable, as importing little creature comforts can be quite tedious.  (Even _more_ tedious is importing comfortable shoes made out of _literal_ creatures.)

 

Stepping over ground zero of ‘Inkgate’, he pointedly does not look at what is _definitely_ a fair amount of vividly crimson blood spattered over the head and neck of the cream-coloured animal skin at his side.  Instead, he neatly reaches into the crowded receptacle to retrieve the pen he has haphazardly disposed of alongside other bits of stationary.

 

Like many older dip pens, its nib has been restored and polished and sharpened over the years, and it is of little surprise when he feels the two tines pierce the flesh of his finger as he blindly feels about the jungle of letterhead.  Nonetheless, he reflexively draws back his hand with a sharp swear to suck on the injured digit for a moment, in an instinctive, self-soothing gesture.  His left hand gives the retrieval process a go, and is far more successful in its venture, meanwhile.

 

The second Hoyt places the pen back in its velvet-lined case atop the exceedingly empty desktop, he is swiftly moving out of the room (shutting the door with a loud slam), heading downstairs, dropping his ink-dampened houseslippers in the lap of a gaping security officer, and tromping out onto the temperate veranda.

 

(A particularly astute employee— one of the longer-lived ones— hefts Hoyt’s “go-bag” onto an unoccupied chair so that his barefoot boss can peruse its contents for the pair of shoes therein.)

 

“You know,” said shoeless boss says aloud, tone nothing but casual and neutral, if a bit overloud, “I’m really in the mood for a good bit of a bust up, tonight.  You know— a, ah, a _party_!  Yes!  A _good_ one.”

 

He quickly slips on whatever extra pair of polished penny loafers his hands hit first and strolls over to a nicely shaded tree with a picnic table of sorts set up beneath it, taking a seat on the long, attached bench.

 

“My computer. _Now_ ,” he says, holding out a hand to his side as a calm breeze sways the boughs in the verdant canopy, overhead. “And for the record… we’re switching to one hundred percent digital, from now on, boys.  Less mess and worry, faster response time, all that good stuff, _ja_?”

 

His intermittently utilized Dell ‘craptop’, as he calls it, will have to serve him well until he can find a more permanent, proper option for his needs.It whirs loudly to life and the screen flickers on at tap of the hyper conspicuous power button, running sluggishly through a half-dozen startup graphics while he waxes on.

 

“Oh, and sack whoever the hell is responsible for ordering my stationary supplies—or whoever the hell procures this ‘artisanal, authentic’ ink shit. Must have oxidized the minute it hit open air.”

 

(Hoyt never again pens a single document by hand, and is noticeably wary about providing his signature.  Somehow, in the right light, and no matter what kind of pen or ink is used, there always seems to be a reddish tint— one that is visible only to him.)

 

* * *

 

 

**The world is far, far away. Or rather, it is the ground that is a great distance away, his height is so great.  Behind him, a wall of heat licks at the hazy air, and little vibrant embers alight on the violent updrafts, flitting to and fro as they are buffeted upwards(s??).  Flames surround his gargantuan form and bolster his strength: they are at his command and so he tells them to rise.**

 

**They do so, and the world is washed in burnished light for a moment.**

 

**Quite suddenly, though, they begin to die out, smothered by some unknown force.  In the remaining light, he sees a familiar figure rapidly approaching from the north.  It is the little creature he thought dead, except that now it is making a much more aggressive approach, attempting an attack while flying over the pathway.**

 

**More quickly than the ancient being could imagine, the tiny thing unshoulders its little weapon and notches one of its long bolts in preparation to be fired.  At that very moment, alarmingly, every last flame flickers out from around him and leaves the nighttime as dark as it has ever been, returning it to its natural, original state.**

 

**The first little projectile strikes his upper body, and falls a long way to the ground, leaving not a single mark behind on his person.  Still, it has been a very long time since another has dared strike him, and somewhere, deep down, it is a bit… jarring, perhaps.**

 

**In any case, the arrogance and the audacity of the angry little thing before him have become beyond irritating, and so he throws out just a modicum of his strength, and with a bit of effort, begins to exude pure, caliginous energy: from the smoky miasma come fleet-footed warriors of his own making, dead-set on waylaying the only other opponent available.  Said enemy combatant deftly avoids any true damage and defeats each and every one of his shadowy minions, also somehow managing to dodge each ball of destructive energy he lobs as well as the poisonous miasma he exhales over the grassy battlefield.**

 

**The all-powerful being has memory that flows back eons through time and yet he cannot remember having yet felt this particular new sensation: worry.  The eventual outcome of this instance is still unknown to him and it is… worrisome.**

 

* * *

 

 

The next day moves forward without a hitch, normal in all ways.  The only abnormality is the rather insidious and pervasive sense of unsettled worry that dogs Hoyt’s every move as the long hours slowly drag by.  He is glad to see the last of the untamed bush dissipate into the distance as his little convoy makes its way steadily up the dirt track winding its way along some fairly steep hillside and towards his residence.  At least the latest batch of hostages and straight up body fodder was significantly larger than usual.  A positive spin has been much needed, as of late, what with all the ridiculous issues with the house and his equipment and whatever-the-fuck-else.

 

All that is on his mind, now, is the delicious meal he is already able to scent from the front gate as his vehicle idles, awaiting the opening of the tall, wrought iron barrier.  Within fifteen minutes, the don of several of the largest illegal operations in southeast Asia is reclined on the settee in his rather minimalistic entertainment room, relaxed and ready for a hearty meal.

 

Ensconced as he is in comfort and quiet, the persistent lethargy he has felt lately threatens to pull him into a light doze right where he sits, until he sits straight up with purpose to avoid that very scenario.  (After all, he thinks to himself, he is not so bad as that; thirty-five he may be, but in need of a late afternoon nap like some _ou toppie_ he is not.)

 

His timing seems fortuitous, too, as moments later, his recently-hired cook shuffles nervously into the room, never quite meeting his eyes as he speaks up just enough to offer a pleasant, polite greeting.  Hm… how terrifying can he be, Hoyt wonders absently as he watches two platters being uncovered atop a tray to the side of his coffee table.  You’d think watching the previous chef put to death by being broiled in an outdoor, wood oven would instill some sort of _bravado_ or maybe some _excitement_ to get to work in the boy, but ah well.  For whatever reason, some people are just uninspired by a promotion in their career field.

 

Although…. wasn’t the last cook this one’s teacher or mentor or some other nonsense?  Eating food is far better than ruminating on its creator, he decides, as he refocuses on the meal being elegantly plated before him.  Credit to the aforementioned ever-anxious boy, who is currently bustling about nearby, arranging the food most pleasantly and appealingly on the chosen dishware: each leaf and every sprinkling of sauce on the side is placed with precision to create a visual almost as appetizing as the scent.

 

He pointedly clears his throat before raising an imperious brow and promptly waving away the young cook who has taken to standing at apprehensive attention near the doorway, ever unsure of any other duties he must perform.  The second the young man skitters out the door after verbally tumbling over some sort of effusive, mumbled parting phrase, Hoyt’s focus is entirely consumed in _at-goddamned-last_ getting to eat his well-deserved supper of fresh sausage with some potato-like root vegetable, served with a thick, savoury-smelling gravy.  To the side is a portion of sautéed local greens, which are lightly latticed with some sort of reddish, translucent sauce.

 

Some habits are hard to break (and rather worth keeping), so he eats his vegetables first, as he had been taught to do what seems like a lifetime ago.  Reflexively, his grip tightens on the glossy, silver fork in his left hand, as though that hand, alone, is reacting to the remembered phantom-light touch of his mother during a rare etiquette lesson.  Ever at odds with his human weakness and his obnoxiously excellent memory, the man snarls out loud and drops his fork to the plate’s side, taking another, longer one and using it to keep one of the well-done sausages in place as he places the finely serrated knife’s edge against its well-cooked flesh.

 

With a deliberate lack of finesse, he makes quick work of cutting everything into more manageable bits and efficiently mixes the rest of the plate’s contents together: the scents perfuming the air have become irresistible and his appetite seems suddenly keen on returning in their presence.

 

He lifts several forkfuls of food to his mouth and is already a good third of the way through his meal when he stops for a moment to call in one of the many patrolling security personnel from the hallway outside of his room.  Hoyt shifts backward, settling deeper into his seat, and addresses the attentive if utterly unemotional guard at the doorway, half-assedly trying to place a name to the face.

 

“Hey— ah, it’s, ah… Dan, right?”

 

“Sam, actually, sir. Sam Becker,” responds the bald man, levelly, his clear-cut Deutsch accent not very hard to place.

 

“Yes, yes.  Whatever.” Hoyt continues, at least just as blasé. “ _Anyway_ , I’d like you to go down to that new chef guy— Brooks or Booker or something— tell him to get us in some better graze around here!  These stringy-looking greens just aren’t doing it for me.  Must have gone off before one of those natives even sold it to us….”

 

The dour-faced mercenary before him barely twitches an eyebrow before nodding, turning about and briskly making his way down the hall and in the direction of the stairwell.  Alone again, and sated enough from his recently near-ravenous appetite to actually take note of the textures and flavours of his meal, he arrives at the conclusion that this is most definitely an abhorrent culinary experience.  While simply spitting the last dregs of food out into a nearby handkerchief holds immense appeal, too many hard-learned etiquette lessons do their part in compelling the Volker scion to, instead, settle for several seconds more of tedious mastication.

 

This is when the tickle in his throat makes its appearance.  It is instinct to clear his throat to alleviate the strange sensation, and so he does, but to no avail.  Even after clearing the last bits of his lackluster dinner from his gullet, the maddening feeling perseveres— seeming to worsen, even, in the face of the several deep draughts of water he drinks in an attempt at easing the discomfort.  Skin now prickling in an indication of burgeoning fear, he hunches forward, slightly, and solidly thumps his upper sternum several times with an open hand while still coughing quite aggressively.

 

At this point, knowing he has hired at least one person decently trained in first aid is sounding like the best decision he has made in his adult life, except that the moment he inhales in preparation to loudly project his voice and call for said person, he can no longer exhale, much less speak.  A cold-and-hot sweat breaks out across his skin, and he scrabbles uselessly at his throat, just managing a most pathetic (but very necessary) wheeze of air back into his lungs.

 

Still, when he again makes an effort to call out for help, both his breathing and his voice are instantly silenced.  With his brain starting to at last feel the effects of a rather sudden lack of oxygen, Hoyt pitches forward to grasp, trembling but vice-like, at the table’s edge with a single hand.  (There is a rushing sound in his ears, more similar to being underwater than to the movement of his own blood, its rhythm like a strange current and not _quite_ like his heartbeat.)

 

A moment later, he is able, once more, to take in a solid breath of air, and afterward, when he attempts to clear his throat, a rather wet sound issues forth.  He inhales threadily, and again attempts to propel whatever the hell is lodged in there up and out.  The next few seconds are filled with the uncomfortable feeling of something half dry and half wet crawling slowly up his throat and to the back of his palate, where it sits, seemingly unable to go any further.

 

The red-faced man on the settee is beyond prepared for an end to the experience, though, and has no qualms about reaching into his own mouth to remove whatever half-cooked bit of his half-assed supper is thoroughly ruining his respiratory system’s— until now— stellar track record of keeping him the fuck alive.

 

The smooth grooves atop a solid gold molar intermittently press into the bottom of his thumb as he reaches as far back as he can, searching through touch for the obstruction.  Just then, he pinches something that brushes damply over questing digits, and lightning-fast is yanking it out of his damn mouth.  And then keeps on pulling, slightly panicked as whatever it is _keeps going_ — it’s some sort of dried plant, maybe?

 

The mystery is rendered unimportant, as suddenly, his airway is completely blocked, again, and now _fully_ panicked, he hacks as hard as he can.  Miraculously, that seems to dislodge the last, stringy bit of whatever-the-fuck-it-is, and he sags backward in his seat, heart hammering a merry triptych in his heaving chest as he then lists to one side to rest on his elbow, eyes closing in staggering exhaustion.

 

Air has rarely ever tasted so sweet, and Hoyt has a grudging, newfound bit of empathy for those he has seen taken out via any method involving asphyxiation, strangulation, or the like.  He lets a few minutes go by this way, outside noise again filtering into his awareness, now that his encounter with sudden and unrequested O2 deprivation has come to an end.

 

When he at last straightens up, ready to throw each and every plate out the damn window (or perhaps at any vital parts of the weasel-y little cook _clearly_ at fault for all of this), his gaze is caught and held by what he sees sitting atop some of the dishware.

 

If he didn’t know better, Hoyt Volker would say that, based on the evidence staring him in his face, he has just spent four or five minutes of his life choking on what looks to be nearly a half meter of human hair.

 

His nose curls and he grimaces, quickly picking and pulling at the little, niggling sensation he has been ignoring on the right side of his tongue, nearly gagging at the sensation of another one or two long strands sliding smoothly up from behind the back of his mouth and out into the open air.  He flicks his fingers rapidly to get rid of these last stragglers and turns his eyes back to the mass of half-slimy, stringy hair he just spent several minutes hacking up like a great, stupid cat.

 

Except that there is literally nothing out of place on the table before him.  His meal is still laid out, nearly finished, as it had been before he started choking and pulling out wefts of hair from his own mou- no.  Nope.

 

Now thoroughly in the land of denial, Hoyt stands up ramrod straight, refastens his houserobes that have been left in disarray, and marches out the doorway of the entertainment room.  As he strides crisply by the man in head-to-toe fatigues and a Kevlar vest who stands guard right at said doorway, he briefly considers what (if anything) he might have heard in the last few minutes, but the idea loses merit when he realises that it would hinder his own steady progress into complete denial of any recent events.

 

When he breezes by the kitchen, he also considers making a scene of firing the new chef— maybe even disposing of him in the exact same manner as his predecessor had been offed, but, again, none of this aids in his throwing today’s experience in a box of ‘things that did not happen’.

 

And so, nobody at the little house atop a hill questions why their employer sits outside and goes through three cigars, still wearing his house robe and looking rather a bit wide-eyed and glassy-gazed.

 

(When he lies in bed, much later, it occurs to him that not one person on his staff has hair much longer than a couple of millimeters.  He resolves to never think of this day ever again.)

 

* * *

 

**Something saps continuously at his once-endless reserves of energy, a completely foreign and disorienting feeling.  His face feels damaged— _cracked_ — on one side, beneath his eye.**

**The flames, too, have betrayed him: they flicker and flare at the tip of each arrow flying toward him.  Yet another one of these makes impact, soaring true to its mark on his already weakened cheek.   He reels back and screams out pain and smoke and poison, clamping spindly, obsidian fingers over the injury, before pitching forward and bracing on his other, uninjured hand.  Through vision warped by heat and agony, he can only barely make out the world about him.**

 

**The warrior runs towards him, full tilt.**

 

* * *

  

Hoyt awakes abruptly, close to noon, in an interesting state.  He is not particularly asleep, nor is he particularly aware of his surroundings.  He is… ‘floaty’, perhaps, as though he has transcended his recently regular state of hyper-fatigue and entered an entirely new one that his mind has not caught up to, yet.  Beneath all of that lurks the low-grade pressure of a burgeoning, massive headache that will undoubtedly become unbearable as the day lurches along.

 

He finds himself unconsciously looking at his hands to see if they look any different, now.  (And what the _hell_ does _that_ mean, he questions himself, acerbically, tamping down the strange compulsion.)  It happens again when he is shaving (an activity that has fallen far by the wayside the past several, very strange days): he scrutinizes his sun-bronzed face, eyes searching for something missing that he does not find, until he shakes himself out of the curious mindset, again, and moves on to lathering dollops of foam about his face.  (He _does_ find that, oddly enough, one cheek is extremely tender— sore to the touch, really— when he runs the razor atop the area, uncharacteristically managing to cut himself due to the reflexive flinch.)

 

Fortuitously, he has employed an eminently well-trained (or rather intelligent) staff, for the most part, and not one soul is lacking in tact and self-preservation enough to enquire about the little, red, razor nick across his cheekbone.  In any case, in short order, he has made his way out of doors and into his usual armoured vehicle, which itself is efficiently surrounded by his escort of two additional Humvees.  The proliferation of gigantic, leafy shrubs at the roadside blur into a mesmerizing patchwork of verdant and rainbow-hued colours before his eyes as they travel rough-shod via backroads.  When their vehicles pull into the dusty, loud worksite, it is as if mere moments have passed.  (Quite a few, too, as his sleek, gilded Wyler watch shows him that the drive has taken no less than 25 minutes.)

 

The strong, early afternoon sun leaves an ephemeral sheen over the lenses of his sunglasses as he turns his head this way and that while touring the busy, dust and sound-filled area.  After taking several turns about the run-down native-built structure, the South African mining magnate moves in the direction of a rather ramshackle building, near the center of all the hubbub.  As he starts descending the age-old hand-hewn stone steps, he is just able to pick up on the sound of frustrated, if not downright aggravated voices rising and falling in volume, down below, somewhere.

 

Determinedly he strides down several well-lit corridors, lined with bulky electrical cables, large tools, and many other pieces of digsite-specific paraphernalia.  The gist of all the ruckus, he gathers, as he nears the open room up ahead in which the majority of the excavation is being done, is that there is a problem getting behind one of the walls: no matter the implement or method, the carved-stone wall remains utterly unchanged.

 

Briefly, he considers ordering up a good old TBM for this project (as well as future ones), but in light of how this project is already only _just_ ahead of schedule, the idea is tossed onto the backburner with little remorse.  Instead, directly interested in the proceedings, he decides to step in and try his hand at solving the problem.  With a bit of a swagger to his step, the diminutive leader steps forward and grabs a sizeable pickaxe on his way to the (seemingly) unmovable structure stumping so many of those in his employ.

 

“Alright, boys!” He booms, shifting his grip on the ergonomically designed, rubbery handle of the gigantic rockpick hammer in his hands, “Let me show you how it’s done!  Spent enough time in my dear old dad’s mines learning the business and all its myriad parts— even the lowest kind of work there is.  So.  Let’s see if I can’t find the best place to get us through, here!”

 

Eyes gaining a sort of piercingly intense focus for his task, the heir to the aforementioned Volker diamond-mining enterprise runs his hands over the raised carvings of gods and warriors (and who-knows-what-other-nonsense) dispassionately, feeling for just the right spot…

 

The crack that rends the air when he successfully breaches the beveled, mural-covered wall is jarringly— almost preternaturally— loud in the relative quiet of the spacious room.  Reactionary winces are plastered across faces about him, and he, too, finds that his hearing seemed to have briefly fluctuated after so sudden (and intense) a sound.

 

With a cursory rub of an ear, via the hand not gripping a tool, Hoyt pivots slightly to address the crowd of rather impressed-looking workmen at his back and gives an extremely abbreviated flourish.

 

“See?  Easy as pie!”  He gesticulates at the breach he has made in the greyish stone, grinning winningly, one arm akimbo in presentation of this most awesome feat. “It’s all in the wrist, see!  Here, let me show you how to get the most momentum out of these finnicky handheld guys, ja?”

 

And for a minute, stripped of any true necessity to intimidate, prevaricate, or whatever else, Volker has what conventional sources might call a sincere ‘Learning Moment’ with a small group of his employees, deep enough beneath the earth that its existence is likely to be disbelievingly debated only hours later among any not physically present, originally.

 

He may be efficient and practiced at every facet of his “business”, from moving living product, to managing (and oftentimes, investing) his ill-gotten gains in lucrative ways, but there is always an undeniable and familiar sort of comfort he feels down here, digging through reluctantly-yielding walls of tight-packed dirt and hard deposit.  This is perhaps the one thing he cannot claim to have learned by his lonesome, unlike nearly every other skill and lesson ingrained in him.

 

Not that he’s ever been inclined to being excessively grateful for said knowledge— it just happens to be of some specific use, today.  All of these thoughts flit lightning-quick through his mind— never hinted at via body language or expression, of course— between one breath and the next. 

 

The room of tuned-in laborers watches as he rolls his shoulders and brings his arms down, in preparation to show another angle at which a strike can be leveled for optimum success.

 

“Ah- just like this!” He grunts, swinging the hefty implement at a spot nearby the initial breach, hoping to begin broadening and opening the hole, now.  Unfortunately, although quite a bit of rock and fine powder fall and crumble away from the area (as planned), the sharp tip of the tool remains firmly embedded in place when he attempts to draw it back out.

 

“Oh, hell,” he mutters to himself, irately, as he does his level best to loosen the piece of equipment from its new place of residence: deep inside a freshly-made hole in the wall. “ _Shit_.”

 

Finding that nothing is moving the trapped tool, he instead reaches into the shallow crevice where it is wedged, noting that he seems to have breached a pre-existing pocket that sat behind the surface.  His fingers brush a rough-surfaced chunk of rock— one large enough that having the tool lodged in it has prevented both items from coming out of the narrow opening to the hidden area.

 

“Agh—  _fokken little—_  this really isn’t that unusual, boys.  Just have to extricate whatever is slowing you down, there, and get right back to business, hm?” he grits out with a bit of feigned brightness.

 

With a nearly inaudible huff, Hoyt jimmies the stubborn rockpick free and firmly grips the offending piece of ore, prepared to expedite the removal of the little troublemaker.  Surprisingly, it comes free with little struggle, leaving him to reel backward with excess momentum for a moment, righting himself almost instantly.

 

Reflexively, he glances at the gritty, rounded object in his hand, noting that he has narrowly avoided impaling his foot with the aciculate end of the implement once lodged in the self-same item.  From one second to the next, however, his blood runs cold and an uncomfortable layer of nervous sweat crops up at his temple and along his lower back.

 

Not another soul seems to be reacting in any way, but in his hand is a human skull— one not long-buried, it would seem (and more than most, this man of iniquitous background is fairly well-acquainted with the stages of decomposition).  The shock of it is peculiar, though, as he has seen many things far worse, objectively, than a skull with some bits of viscera still stubbornly clinging to it.  Except that, for some reason, _this_ particular skull seems familiar…

 

Hoyt blinks and is only just barely able to strangle the instinctive sound that tries to crawl from deep in the recesses of the fear center of his brain.  (As it is, a choked off sort of wheezed grunt is audible, for a moment.)

 

Now cradled in both of his chalk-white hands is… his own face?  No— _it is his entire head_ , eyes filmy and dull in death, blood rolling steadily over his fingers to drip on the dusty floor.  Atop the crown of his—  _the_ head, matted in viscous red fluid is a massive puncture wound; there is a matching hole several inches below the right ear.  The little river of blood winding its way over his wrist and down his forearm is still warm, the mouth—  _his_ mouth— drops open into a gape, and a sound seems to try and work its way out— a word?  _Words_?  Like _go_ —

 

“Boss?”

 

Hoyt almost literally leaps back from the source of the query, it cuts so cleanly through his haze of focused horror.  Murky, pale green eyes dart up to meet the scrutinizing, dark gaze of one of his many security personnel, their colour unnervingly pervasive due to the pinprick pupils that have contracted so severely (in spite of the limited available light).  Almost as an extension of his reflexes, he throws the— the— _object_ in his hands at the ground nearby, and hears a dull sort of crack followed by the pattering of smaller fragments meeting with other surfaces.

 

His bone-dry throat clicks for a second in the stifling silence as he works to wet his palate, intent on blustering his way right on past whatever this very publicly visible incident has turned into.

 

“Agh _,_ why is this god-forsaken island always so damn _hot_??  And—and _infested with such an abundance of biting, chasing, **poisonous** creatures?_   _Fokken_ spider was just _waiting_ for some halfwit to stick his fool hand in, and there _I_ was, trying to teach a room full of them how to do decent work!”

 

Hoyt’s voice, despite its volume, seems to vanish quietly into the darkness creeping at the edges of the ill-lit room, and he decides (completely unrelated to any part of his odd experience down there, of course) that his time at the digsite is done for today.  Dirt and stone are dry beneath the soles of his well-worn boots as he pivots on his heel, and continues addressing his (still mostly perplexed and mildly alarmed) captive audience, even as he makes his way toward the steps leading above-ground.

 

“See if I ever risk life and limb to teach a workshop on how to _fucking_ swing a damn rock-pick hard enough at a wall.  Next time, I’ll just hire a _bladdy_ professional!”

 

Down below, the room of contracted construction and mining laborers takes several minutes to quickly reorganize and resume their projects, all the while quietly trying to come to a conclusion as to exactly _what_ just happened.

 

(Time has, again, decided on its own, senseless pace, and the horizon is already smattered with a variegated wash of watercolor hues, all settled around the soon-to-set sun.  There is also the subdued white noise of calm radio chatter while his convoy moves forward, his vehicle in the middle, as always.  A cracked window allows the open air to cool the gathering beads of perspiration on the back of his neck, and Hoyt even briefly contemplates closing his eyes to enjoy the sensation even more acutely.

 

Except that, then, he might be forced to review the moment in which he had glanced down at the place where he had...  _‘aggressively dropped’_ the strange, aged human skull that was extricated from behind that sealed, stone wall.  Or rather, he prefers not to think on the knowledge that the only thing he had glimpsed on the ground had been the tool he’d discarded out of surprise.

 

And that, so far as those around him seen, _not a single damn thing_ had come out of that thrice-damned opening.

 

All he wants is to slough off every last speck of dirt in a refreshing, well-deserved shower, and then maybe hope for some proper, quality rest.  Yes, a little _doss_ back in his own bed seems the way to go.)

 

* * *

**There is something on his arm— something _moving_.  It is hard to see anything, anymore, and his anger is so acute and overwhelming, it adds to the pain.  (Or perhaps it is the other way around.)  He straightens his torso and shrugs his shoulders firmly and with purpose— the curious weight is now near his neck.  He reaches up to sweep what he now knows to be the miniscule being from atop his mantle, but searing, all-encompassing pain becomes his world.  By the time his reflexes send his other arm up to stem the literal flood of lifeblood from the front of his throat, there is nothing left to grab.  There is only the open air above—**

**Everything is disjointed.  All at once, sound is muffled and yet more piercing than it has ever been, before.  His pulse sounds strange— _closer_.  His eyes blink sluggishly, and already dim vision darkens even further.  The horror mounts and mounts as the air thins— the last thing he sees is his own body, a jagged line cut above his jugular notch, the wet stump spraying the dark ground around it with ink-black, thick liquid.**

 

* * *

 

He awakes.

 

His neck feels wet with his own blood— or is it sweat?  There is the cloying scent of something rich and coppery from somewhere close by.  His right eye is feeling some sort of phantom pain, too—feeling hot to the touch, if not a bit swollen, and throbbing in time to some unknown rhythm.  Back still flat against the mattress, his whole chest seems to pulsate with how strong the large muscle within it is beating— it is almost all he can hear.  A trembling hand runs through sweat-sodden locks— a rare occurrence, as his bedchambers are always temperature controlled, even if not much of anywhere else is— and a fortifying breath is taken before further action.

 

He pitches forward off the side of the bed— weak, rubbery legs barely keeping him upright— and staggers toward the attached washroom.  He notes, glancing toward a windowed alcove, that it is still dark outside.  The moment before he flicks on the light, he is almost certain he sees two bright yellow eyes peering intently back at him from the place where his own would be in the mirror’s reflection.

 

Under harsh fluorescent light, he gazes at (or more accurately, _through_ ) his haggard face, feeling as though he has somehow… _lost_ sleep by lying down for the few hours he must have been unconscious.  In that moment, he resolves to get more rest, and now, in hopes of doggedly pursuing the rest he has been so in need of, lately.

 

Groaning, the over-tired entrepreneur gently rubs his eyes and flicks off the light (carefully avoiding his own, mirrored visage), and steps back into his bedroom, hyper aware of the fabric tacking onto sweat-damp skin.  He shuffles forward and blearily opens his closet door to quickly exchange his damp shirt for a fresh one.  His hearing narrows as he twists the handle downward, the metal cooler than expected.

 

And inside his closet, there is a darkness he cannot comprehend.  Sounds come from this void that mirror voices from his past, and several from his present.  There are many that he does not recognize at all.

 

He hears… his own voice.

 

The entirety of each of his fingers are so cold that he cannot feel them, and his nose has gone numb from the chill as well, it is so biting.

 

He cannot breathe.  It is as if the very breath has been sucked from his chest, leaving nothing but a frigid, brittle sort of ache.

 

His eyes are dry, like they have been staring into the sun for too long— or maybe, have been subjected to persistent winter winds for hour upon hour without cease.

 

Hoyt does not know the last time he blinked, but when next he does, everything around him wavers, as if there is a distortion in the very fabric of reality surrounding him.  A bone-deep shudder races up his spine and something instinctive and primal inside him propels his left arm forward to slam the rickety door before it shut.

 

The memory of the luminescent, yellow eyes he has twice seen is seared into the forefront of his thoughts, again, for some reason, even as he greedily sucks in lungfuls of much-needed air in the murky half-light of his bedchamber.

 

Indeed, Hoyt Volker has gazed into the abyss.

 

Hoyt Volker is also not staying another _fokken_ **_minute_** on this (apparently literal) hellhole.

 

Uncaring of his state of rumpled, partial undress, the 40-year old multi-millionaire slips into his plush house-slippers by the door and grabs the spare robe he keeps by the stairwell leading to the ground floor.  He breezes by the heavily armed guards positioned in various places downstairs and walks outside and straight to their best armored vehicle.

 

The startled man standing before the vehicle stutters out an appropriately polite, respectful greeting and stares dumbly as his boss stands quietly by the back door of said Humvee.  At the sight of the diminutive man raising an eyebrow, said young man breaks out in a nervous sweat at the same time as he leaps into action, quickly jumping into his role of chauffeur-on-call for the graveyard shift.  As he swings the door open for the oddly-attired man, he speaks into his earpiece and requests an additional passenger or three to join on this unforeseen, late drive.

 

Minutes later, Hoyt finally catches a bit of uninterrupted sleep (really, it’s closer to a light doze), as their ‘midnight ride’ carries them to the nearest airstrip, which is no more than twenty minutes away.

 

And so, it comes to pass that Hoyt Volker leaves Rook North via a spare patrol helicopter at precisely 2:37 in the morning.  He watches as trees and vegetation about the helo pad bow down toward the ground under the strong currents of air battering them.  (And as they rise to dizzying heights, he cannot help but to feel a disorienting link to a recent nighttime vision of standing this tall and exhaling inky blackness as dark as the sky around him, now.)

 

He closes his eyes and sits back for the relatively short ride to Rook South, and thusly, entirely misses the large, dark shape that seems to follow the path of his helicopter.

 

He never plans to return to the place he has just left, anyway, so what does it matter?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

**_Present Day_ **

 

 

Hoyt runs his hands over his face and sighs gustily, troubled thoughts churning about his head.

 

He has come to a decision based on logic and level-headed consideration, but every facet of his lizard hindbrain is telling him to absolutely abort said decision.

 

The five-year streak of utterly avoiding setting foot on Rook North will be broken in just a few hours. This opportunity for massive profit is simply too important for him not to oversee even one part; just seeing that the lot of these little golden geese has landed safely should satiate whatever compulsion is making him overcome his little embargo on visiting the other half of his territory, hopefully.

 

Just a quick stop-off at Vaas’ little secondary camp, used specifically for ‘moving people’, and he’ll be back home before the sun even begins to approach setting beyond the watery horizon.

 

Providing all goes according to plan.

 

*

 

It doesn’t.

 

There are “engine troubles” with every single aircraft at his disposal on Rook South, and so he is forced to take a virtual armada of boats with him as he boards his own heavily outfitted gunboat to cross the unusually choppy waters between the two islands.

 

Furthermore, time seems to be in a mood to **exist** very relatively today: by the time he arrives at his destination, he is beyond annoyed (and rather taken aback), as it is somehow just about to hit dusk.  His burgeoning unease further fuels his ire, and he snaps at the obnoxious _dommkop_ that is Vaas Montenegro to quickly finish up business, here, before pivoting on his heel and heading toward his transportation.

 

Thankfully, there is only one mile to endure of some very roughshod riding over wild terrain.

 

The feeling that there are myriad eyes following his every move from the jeep to the awaiting helicopter is impossible to shake, but he manages to maintain his composure; the dark sea is soon beneath him and is calmer than it has been in quite some time.

 

Unseen as always, the gargantuan, dark form beneath the shifting surface dutifully follows the aircraft’s path, and the pink sky above saturates to a more sanguineous shade as the sun takes its leave.

 

In the days to come, blood will saturate the islands of Rook, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 **Bladdy (Hell)-** Damn/damnit **.** (from British English phrase "bloody hell") ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Bust up** - Big party involving lots of drugs and booze. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Check** - See, look, pay attention.  ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Domkop –** Dumbass.  ( _South African/Dutch slang)_   [“Domkop” translates literally to ‘dumbhead’.]

 **Doss, dorse, dossing**  - Sleep or nap. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Fokken** \-  Form of Afrikaans word for "fuck", can be used in most ways it is used in English. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Graze** \- A term used in reference to food. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **Ja, Nee** -  An expression of positive confirmation; Yes, no. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_   ["Ja-nee" translates literally to 'yes no'.]

 **Klap -** To (give someone a) smack; often like a "bitch-slap". ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_  

 **Loskop -**    Air head, refers to someone whose head is in the clouds, clumsy, forgetful. ( _South African/Dutch slang)_   [“Loskop” translates literally to a ‘lost head’.]

 **Ou Toppie -** Old man, refers usually to an elderly man and a father.  _(South African/Afrikaans/Dutch slang)_   ["Ou Toppie" translates literally to 'old man'.]

 **Slapgat** \-  Lazy arse; also can refer to something badly put together. ( _South African/Afrikaans slang)_

 **TBM** \- ( _abbr.)_ [Tunnel boring machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine);  also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata.  ([They can bore through anything from hard rock to sand](http://gizmodo.com/24-tunneling-machines-that-created-a-world-beneath-our-1587172041).)

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(If I completely fucked up the above phrases, feel free to lemme know. The couple of languages/dialects I speak do not include the one[s] above.)

 

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Aight. I have never attempted to write anything with the intention of it being vaguely spooky/disturbing.  Shit, I still _don't_ know how to do it, really. Ahahaha.  But yeah, the bolded bits of writing between Hoyt's different days are, of course, a chopped up account of the legendary battle with the ink monster/giant that Citra talks about.   Clearly, I just went with the in-game parallel(s) and sort of more directly linked Hoyt and the ink monster.   (And then threw in some general freaky island fuckery.)

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Fun fact:  I have nicknamed this work the 'hellfic', because it took me, like, 4 months to buckle down and finish filling in, reworking, and rewriting missing and 'dead' bits and pieces. Like, _ugh_.  I loved the idea, but I hit some  _major_ writer's block 3/4 of the way through, and then, stubbornly, decided not to work on any other fic so long as this one wasn't finished.  (HAHAHAHA. GENIUS.  #butnotreally)

 

You can likely find the parts where I was really forcing myself to slog through lack of inspiration/desire to write. ://  Agh.   Still, it's my longest work, yet, and that's a success, I s'pose.  Yay?  Every bit of writing helps you to improve, right?...

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Come find me on [Tumblr](http://www.citraisafuckboy.tumblr.com)! :3

**Author's Note:**

> Be niiccee to meee. This series of works is still only the second thing I have *ever* written, so I am very much in the learning process. (And my weird self-conscious ass still hasn't mustered up the guts to find a beta. Urghhh.)  
> *
> 
> Come check out [my writing blog](https://dovahdoeswrite.tumblr.com/), where I post early fic snippets and keep you updated on what i'm working on in what fandoms!
> 
> P.S. I looooves me some kudos! *hint hint* And damn, feel free to leave a little comment, down below, too! <33


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